


Small Eternities

by MarshmallowMcGonagall



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Avada Kedavra, Death, Gen, Shrieking Shack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23430619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarshmallowMcGonagall/pseuds/MarshmallowMcGonagall
Summary: The books of Muggle science in his quarters wrote of how the brain stopped working when a person died. Severus read any pages which touched on the idea with a hunger he couldn’t sate. He wanted answers. He wanted to know what had happened to those his wand was aimed at when he said the words, Avada Kedavra. When he extinguished the lamps as he slid into bed for an hour or two before dawn would break, he would allow himself to wonder, for a moment, what would happen to him when his time came.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Small Eternities

The books of Muggle science in his quarters wrote of how the brain stopped working when a person died. Severus read any pages which touched on the idea with a hunger he couldn’t sate. He wanted answers. He wanted to know what had happened to those his wand was aimed at when he said the words, Avada Kedavra. When he extinguished the lamps as he slid into bed for an hour or two before dawn would break, he would allow himself to wonder, for a moment, what would happen to him when his time came.

Years of wondering who would do it.

Plagued since childhood with the notion people wanted to. Sitting bolt upright in bed at night, heart hammering in his chest, no tunnel of white light but a dark earthy place where he was tricked into letting his life become only a possibility.

No matter his value to those who knew him, every meeting with someone new brought to mind the thought of what his value was to them.

Too often he witnessed his associates make a decision punctuated with the Avada Kedavra. Too often he made those decisions, too. Changing sides didn’t change the revulsion. Some knew. He saw in their eyes the moment they realised. Some could only guess. Some knew nothing. But he wondered if they did. If in the time between the jet of green light leaving the wand and hitting their body they knew. 

Time. Time plagued him. The notion of an instant death unbelievable because time didn’t stop. He knew of no magic which could render time unmoving. Which meant there must be a moment, however small, of knowing. If not that it was the end, that it was something they ought to know the meaning of.

Who would it be who aimed their wand at him and uttered the words? He would sit, clutching his head, knowing there was no safe place anymore. He betrayed, he kept promises, he held no pretense of having allies. There was time and work to be done.

The desire for it to be over quickly. Everything came down to time. Time to do what he was meant to. Time to know if he succeeded or failed. Time to know if it was over.

And when it was, there was no jet of green light. He wasn’t going to know what happened when the Avada Kedavra was spoken into being. He was being given time. He was given the chance to finish his work.

Then the dark. Eyes he once knew and then his own closing. No zoetrope of his life. Nothing so solid as words or thoughts. If emotions were a colour, his life was stained an emerald green. A precious stone with facets carved to let the light through depending how it was turned. The swell of life marked by a friend, a house, a curse. Distilled into a notion. There was no time for a sense of comfort. The small eternity extended around him with a sense of -

He slipped from the world and became a memory. His small eternity over before the birdsong around the Shrieking Shack ceased. The answer he longed for, lost to the ether.


End file.
